Creative Control

2016 "A story about virtually everything"
5.4| 1h37m| R| en| More Info
Released: 11 March 2016 Released
Producted By: Ghost Robot
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://creativecontrolmovie.com
Synopsis

Smooth advertising executive David is in a relationship with yoga teacher Juliette. Then his eye is caught by Sophie, the girlfriend of his best friend Wim, a fashion photographer. Things get completely out of hand during a campaign for augmented reality-glasses, for which David designs an avatar of the coveted Sophie.

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knutslie Contains spoilers!This movie is about a marketing guy who gets to borrow augmented reality glasses from an inventor so that his company can market them. Also, he is secretly in love with his friend's girlfriend. His guy friend is a photographer and the girl works for his company. Marketing guy lives with another girl who is a yoga teacher. So, marketing guy starts experimenting with the augmented reality glasses and creates a digital copy of his secret crush, which ultimately leads to problems with his yoga teacher girlfriend and his photographer friend. Meh, the drama.Technically, the movie is well made, except they forgot to filter the background noise from some of the scenes.The dialogues between the main character's are tiresome, pretentious and boring. The character's are boring or cliché. Any attempt at satire is ruined by too serious and melodramatic tone. The augmented reality glasses side of the story is unimaginative and cliché. This tech- nonsense-drama is obviously a failed attempt at mimicking 'Her' (2013). This movie was a complete waste of time.
charles000 The character studies are priceless . . . and remarkably on targetHow to actually describe this?A stylized rendition of uber fluff post millennial somethings immersed into the quasi emergent culture norm of this near future world, something like "Silicon Valley", extruded through a NY augmented reality enhanced art / ad agency scene mandrel.But, that only barely covers the real description of what this is.The character studies are priceless . . . and remarkably on target (at least in my perturbed opinion), maybe too close to home for some?Visually, this is an art piece to be appreciated, but perhaps that is too distracting for some of the previous reviewers.It's something of a twisted love story, but I had no difficulty at all following the various sub plot threads woven into this story.No, not quite a 10, but certainly a well deserved 8.Yes, this is a bit different, perhaps a bit of a risky tangent to have extrapolated upon, but for what it is, remarkably well done.I don't mind when a production takes a bit of a risk, strays just a bit outside the box to deliver a potential future experience.Some have suggested this will be soon forgotten as a trivial experiment in filmcraft.I'm leaning in the other direction, more toward this maybe becoming a sort of future cult classic in its own context.My humble suggestion . . . watch and absorb this, it will be worth the time spent.
Erik Stuborn An interesting, and different, black comedy that provides an interesting and unprecedented view of how future technologies will affect all human relationships: friendship, emotional relationships, work relationships... in a kind of tribute to the most futuristic visions of Jacques Tati in "Mon Oncle" or "Play Time', also the story has dyes from Philip K. Dick's sharpness, without forgetting —as a black comedy— the touch of Woody Allen's anticipation style, although the protagonist is nailed to Nanni Moretti...The movie keeps the tension, creates perfectly chained situations and solves with good arts a script that could have fallen a hundred different places. The atmosphere and aesthetics of the film are noteworthy, with its mild anachronistic touch, and has no cracks in its approach of frightening (and suggestive at once) speculative fiction while being an American comedy about thirtysomething people and their usual problems: love, job, friends, addictions, unfulfilled desires and the reality that —always— imposes itself (problems that, apparently, are the same in the future). A striking film for those interested in Speculative Fiction.
Paul Allaer "Creative Control" (2016 release; 97 min.) brings the story of two couples. There is David and his girlfriend Juliette. David is working at an ad agency and is tasked with coming up with a good ad campaign for a new "augmented reality system" called Augmenta. David gets to try it out (by wearing regular-looking glasses) for some time. Juliette is a yoga instructor. It looks like their relationship isn't the greatest. Then there is Wim and Sophie. Wim is David's long-time buddy who hasn't the slightest problem with cheating on Sophie. David then hires Sophie to come work at the ad agency. At this point we're not even 15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.Couple of comments: first, this is the latest release from Amazon Studios, which is starting to spread its wings in the movie business quite nicely. Second, this is the Benjamin Dickinson show all the way: he stars (as David), directs, co-writes and co-produces this film, his first feature-length as a director. Dickinson sets the story in the not too distant future, where things still look quite familiar (certainly New York does), but technology has made continued progress. Yet the idea of an "augmented reality system" is of course not new. In fact, conceptually the movie is eerily similar to/reminiscent of that movie from the early 80s, "Brainstorm" (starring Christopher Walker and Natalie Wood, in her last film), where sex also was a big driver. Yes, I said sex. There is quite a bit of nudity in "Creative Control", so if that bothers you, you'd better pick another movie. "Creative Control" is shot in black and white, and given the slightly futuristic setting, it makes for a very stylish movie, and one of its better aspects. The other lead performers (Nora Zehetner as Juliette, Dan Gill as Wim, and Alexia Rasmussen as Sophie), all below the radar names, do their best to flesh out their characters, but in the end, the biggest failing of the movie is that it left me emotionally uninvolved and, frankly, I didn't feel invested in any of the movie. Plenty of style, but not enough substance."Creative Control" opened this weekend out of the blue without any pre-release buzz or advertising on a single screen here in Cincinnati. The Saturday matinée screening where I saw this at was attended okay but not great. Given the lack of star power and lack of marketing for this movie, I can't imagine that this will play long in theaters. If you are into movies heavy on relationship drama but here with a sci-fi twist, I'd encourage you to check out "Creative Control", be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually of DVD/Blu-ray and draw your own conclusions.